After this past weekend, it occurred to me that I do not have a photo albums collection on Flickr dedicated only two Halloween parties, as opposed to Halloween itself—I'm talking about costume parties, which happen either one or two weekends prior to the actual date of Halloween. So, I made one! This includes ten photo albums of pre-Halloween costume parties over the past 15 years, dating back to 2004. And it reveals a sort of trend, where it's basically a succession of phases where two or more years I've had parties in one place, until it moves to another place for a while. The first one is an exception; I only went to a costume party at Andrea's one time, in the year 2004. But then, starting in 2005, Laney hosted Halloween parties four years in a row (although the last one she made a "Day of the Dead" party on November 1 rather than having a party a full week before Halloween). After 2008, though, there was a six-year dry spell: no costume parties to attend between 2009 and 2014. But! I have had Halloween costume parties to attend the past five years in a row now: two years in a row with Shobhit in L.A. (2015, 2016); two years in a row of costume parties at Jennifer and Eric's in Shelton (2017, 2018); and then, this year, a new one: the "Boo Bash!" that Gina and Beth help organize in Olympia, which Dad, Sherri and I all kind of migrated over to this year in lieu of Jennifer and Eric's party now that those two have separated. I have a feeling there is a much greater than zero chance I will return to that again next year, as I quite like having a Halloween season event to experience with Dad and Sherri now that they no longer host their official "open house" at their home, and I don't go to Olympia on Halloween night itself anymore.

So! That also means Saturday night was my first occasion to wear this year's Halloween costume, something that amuses me probably far more than it amuses anyone else, but hey, whatever works (for me)! Looking at the photo of me above, can you even tell what I was supposed to be? I really need to start trying harder to dress up as something I don't have to explain to everyone looking at it. Looking back, I haven't truly dressed as something people recognize on sight since I dressed up as Willy Wonka in 2016, although for my "fairy princess" costume in 2017, people generally got the gist. Last year's "Be the Change" outfit was a bit more for people to process, and was disappointingly interpreted as "political" by a few people in my family who were apparently not greatly adept at nuance.

But, this year, no one has gotten it on sight, although Beth was the closest when she took a look at me -- she could tell, at least, that I was partly dressed as a cactus. She looked at me and said, "You're a cactus pirate?"

Close! "I'm Cactus Hook!" I said, and then she got it. And I had to make that clarification for pretty much everyone else too. But whatever, it still cracks me up. The phrase "Cactus Hook" came up in a podcast I was listening to months ago (on Threedom, I think; I should tweet them this photo) and I immediately decided that was what I should dress up as for Halloween this year. For some time I had no idea how I would recreate cactus needles for the costume, but then Laney had the brilliant suggestion of pipe cleaners. I even spent some time imagining that would pose more challenge than it did in the end, because I kept thinking of either sewing them to a shirt somehow, or even when I bought a glue gun at Michaels (at the suggestion of an employee when I told her what I was trying to do), I kept imagining gluing just the end of pipe cleaner pieces and wondering how they would stay sticking out. I should have thought of this, though, and it finally occurred to me when I had the packets of pipe cleaners in hand: those things bend, duh! So I just pent the ends a bit and that provided some surface for glue, and then because of the bending, the rest of it could stick straight out from my body.

You might also notice that the "needles" are attached to me in little groups of three, which was another great idea given to me by Shobhit. I actually got a lot of good ideas from people over time and the evolution of my approach to putting this costume together. When I found the pirate hat at Champion Party Supply, there were other hats available, one that looked a lot more authentic actually, but I chose this one because I decided the cornier the better. All that matters is getting the concept across, although succeeding at that specifically has been done only moderately well at best.

Oh, well. I would go back and forth on this idea, spending some time wondering if it was too "high concept" and I should come up with something else. The problem was that I could never think of anything else to dress as this year at all, and by the time it was October, starting from scratch seemed a little late. Then I went to Champion with Shobhit and bought the pirate hat and a packet with a hook for my hand, a sword, an eye patch and an earring, and that settled it: Now, I have to figure out how to make it work!

I definitely needed a green shirt. That shirt you see me wearing is the $6 shirt I found at Goodwill on Capitol Hill on Tuesday last week. And in this photo you can see my initial work on it, done late-ish on Friday evening. I realized after a little while that the pipe cleaner "needles" were too long, and ultimately decided to cut them down to about half that length, which I actually do think works better. So instead of only cutting each pipe cleaner in half, I cut them all in half and then in half again.

I didn't even put the costume—or that shirt—on until I arrived at the Lacey Community Center around 6:00 on Saturday night. I couldn't imagine wearing that under my jacket on the way there, although at the moment I am thinking about doing just that when I dress in the costume again for work on Thursday. I wound up changing inside the U-Haul Gina and Beth had rented on Saturday, but I don’t particularly want to have to change at work. Or maybe I'll still suck it up and do that, who knows. That might still be easier.

Anyway. I took city and regional transit buses to Olympia and back over the weekend, a one-way trip that takes about two and a half hours, but it still generally far more pleasant than having to drive myself, especially when more often than not the drive takes longer than it should (although to be fair, when I drove down for Angel's birthday party earlier this month, the drives really weren't bad), but by and large the buses stay on schedule. In fact, almost invariably the Intercity Transit #620 from the SR 512 Park & Ride arrives at the Olympia Transit Center five to ten minutes early. In any case, I took the King County Metro #11 from home to downtown; caught the Sound Transit #594 from 4th & Stewart to the 512 Park & Ride; then transferred there to the Intercity Transit 620—the only bus I had to pay for, as Intercity Transit does not accept Orca Cards (they used to several years ago as a sort of pilot program, but when they did not have the budget to outfit their buses with card readers, they did not go with it). That last bus has a special "express bus" fare of $3, but three bucks each way is still one hell of a lot cheaper than any other transit option. Hell, Greyhound would be $16 at minimum and still take 95 minutes to get there from downtown Seattle—that's more than five times the price, to reduce travel time by only slightly more than a third (and when you factor in the bus from home to downtown that I'd have to take either way, it makes even less of a difference). That's not really the most efficient conversion, and two and a half hours of riding three buses notwithstanding, the city buses route is easily the most economical choice. Besides, I can always nap or read—two things I can't do when driving myself. I can't comprehend how long haul truck drivers, or hell, even transit bus drivers, do it. I'd be nodding off constantly. I should never be hired as a driver of anything!

Another interesting thing about the part on Saturday: Although none of my nieces or nephews or any of their kids were there—it wouldn't really have been there bag; there were very few actual children there; the kids all have their own lives and holiday things to do with their families—it did have all of my Western Washington (specifically, Olympia) immediate family in attendance: Dad and Sherri came; Gina and Beth, as organizers, of course came; and even Angel came. That's who you see in the above image, in her award-winning jellyfish costume! No one could even tell who she was under that thing, but there were apparently anonymous judges meandering around the party, and Angel got first prize in the end. She's been pretty crafty in the past, at least two different Christmases making gifts for everyone, but this has to be the most effort I have ever seen her put in any one thing. She said she got the idea from Pinterest.

There was a slight malfunction, apparently, and she still won the prize in spite of that. The judges never saw her in the dark with all the lights lit up; she was only ever seen inside the banquet room of the Lacey Community Center, the lights barely perceptible since it was very well lit in there. Maybe she should have gone in the area just outside the windows and wandered around a bit so people could see it in the dark. I never saw her in the dark, either; that shot of her in the dark, with the purple lights still working, was one she had taken earlier in the evening and she later posted to Facebook. (I took the shot of her standing in front of the spiderweb backdrop, which had indeed been set up for photo ops). Apparently, though, the purple lights would not work after she got out of the car when she actually arrived at the community center. Gina had to go out and help her, probably just generally speaking more than figuring out the lights; Angel does suffer from arthritis, after all. Whatever the case, I think the prize was well deserved.

Dad and Sherri, on the other hand, having last year been in by far the best costumes at Jennifer and Eric's party (as far as I was concerned, anyway), opted for something a bit less elaborate this year. When I hung out at Dad and Sherri's house for a few hours before the party—after Dad actually walked downtown to meet me near the bus station and then walk back up the hill with me—he told me about how he had seen a woman in a really cute Halloween skirt somewhere, and he asked her where she got it. She said Amazon, and so Sherri found one of her own to order on Amazon as well. She added the pumpkin hair band, and three you have it! Dad dressed up as what he called a "tourist."

Sherri tried to resist getting up for the picture at first, but in the end she did, and I am so glad, because I think this photo is fantastic. It did make me wonder how much more obstinate she might get about these things in the coming years, though. I'm imagining her as an eighty-year-old digging in her heels at a table and saying, "I'm not moving!" I'll just have to make sure I get the photo op before they sit down, I guess.

This was certainly a different kind of Halloween costume party, in that there was no drinking -- it was an Alcoholics Anonymous-affiliated event. So, presumably the majority of the people there were alcoholics, but sober. It occurred to me just now that pretty much made it the first Halloween party I had ever been to where I had no alcohol. (I suppose it's possible I didn't have any drinks in, say, the party in 2004. I actually don't remember.) Dad asked me while we were walking if it seemed to be weird going to a Halloween party with no drinking, and I said no, not really. I pointed out that we basically have a Halloween party at work every year and no one drinks at that. We still all have fun, spending the day eating popcorn and drinking hot apple cider.

This party, which they called the Third Annual "Boo Bash," was a potluck. It also charged $10 a ticket for entry, which I totally spaced, and was going to get money for, and then Dad just paid for my ticket. I didn't bring any food either. Dad and Sherri brought spaghetti, though. Still, I kind of really coasted through this weekend without having to contribute in the ways everyone else did. I had transferred my bags to the aforementioned U-Haul and when Dad and Sherri left, I stayed behind as this time I was to stay the night with Beth and Gina, since Beth had invited me to when she invited me to come to this party. I realized pretty early on that this would mean being there pretty late, as Gina and Beth were basically the primary organizers of this party—with a few volunteer helpers—and so I would have to wait around during cleanup. And during that, I helped a little bit, though not a whole lot. I had no idea where anything went. But, I did ask Gina if there was anything I could do, and a few times she asked for certain small things to get carried out to the van or whatever, and I was happy to.

There was only one moment in the evening that was thorny for me. There was maybe an hour of dancing, with tables moved out of the way, and predictably at one point they played Michael Jackson's "Thriller." I have not played any Michael Jackson of my own volition since watching Leaving Neverland, but Michael Jackson defenders are plentiful and everywhere. Also, it's not like anyone at this party was necessarily a "defender." They're just among the many who haven't bothered to pay attention, and they remain enamored with a back catalog that is objectively great music. My being convinced that Michael Jackson absolutely was a predator pedophile has no bearing on the greatness of the song "Thriller." This is still something I struggle with: maybe one day I can just compartmentalize, and be able to enjoy his music again. I mean, full disclosure: even though I was sitting at the table while the crowd was all about dancing to the song, I still tapped my foot along to it. It's an irresistible beat. The problem is, any time I hear it, I also think about a man sexually molesting children. And it's gross.

The vast Jackson Army, by and large, does not have this problem, because they have convinced themselves it's all just slander and that Michael Jackson's massive and undeniable talent alone "proves" he was a good and innocent person—a line of thinking for which there is no logic whatsoever, but it's widespread nonetheless. I encountered it yet again just this morning, when Patton Oswalt retweeted a video of a bunch of kids at a high school doing the "Thriller" dance. Scroll through the replies, and it's 95% joyous reactions. And however despicable Michael Jackson might actually have been, is that reason to deny people the joy they experience in a video like that? The context of the video itself really has nothing to do with Michael Jackson's crimes, and has everything to do with shared experiences and community, by people dancing to a song by a guy whose true nature was far from being even hinted at when the song was first released and turning him into the biggest pop star in the world.

But still, Jesus Christ. You see one reply that says "i thought mj was canceled," and it's that person who gets piled on, by person after person clearly engaging in willful self-delusion and denial. (Also, it's quite clear that he hasn't been canceled at all. At the party on Saturday, I did have to acknowledge to myself: his songs are not going to stop getting played at parties any time soon. It's just a fact, and those of us feeling any discomfort about it just have to live with it.)

But enough about that bummer of a subject! Let's talk about the Three Blind Mice, and the Farmer's Wife with them!

That's Gina and Beth in the middle, with two friends of theirs whose names I promptly forgot seconds after they were told to me, on the ends on either side. They won third prize, if I recall correctly, in the "group costume" category. Several prizes were handed out, but I thought it was pretty damned cool that both my sisters got prizes that night.

The "Farmer's Wife" bit was an especially nice touch, and is what takes it to a bit higher level than say, when Kibby and Shauna and I dressed as Three Blind Mice for Halloween in 2005. We had no accompanying Farmer's Wife, wielding a cleaver. (The same year, Barbara and I dressed up as the same for both Laney's Halloween party and for Halloween in Olympia, using Shobhit as the third mouse, but with his "missing" photo on milk cartons because he was out of town on a visit to India that year. That part was still a pretty clever improvisation, I think.)

There was a lot of great costumes at the Boo Bash, though; I just didn't take pictures of any of them when I did not have family members already posing with them, because of the whole "Anonymous" part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I really wasn't sure the extent to which I should be careful about that, and about sharing photos of people there. It's probably nothing anyone was particularly concerned about, but I still wanted to be as respectful as I could be (especially given that I am, you know, me). There's actually a fair amount more I could share about this event, particularly regarding the featured speaker, but I am not sharing it for this very reason. That and, I may have made a pretty big mistake regarding issues of this nature recently—it's still unclear to me to what extent any damage was done, if at all—and I don't want to repeat it.

Given that I stuck around for cleanup to finish, we actually got back to Gina and Beth's place at a time that was not too extremely late; I'm pretty sure it was not yet even 11:00. And Gina and Beth and I all sat in the living room and visited for a while, which was nice. I had already chatted up Gina in the van on the drive to their place (they waited to unload it until yesterday morning), and that was how I got the history of their involvement with this event: Gina told me they simply hosted a Halloween party at their house two years ago, but it wound up being so packed, to the point you could barely move from one room to another, that by last year they decided to make it a more "official" event, at a separate venue. I'm betting this was a big part of their having come to Jennifer and Eric's party in 2017, but not last year—they just had too much more going on last year, even though I'm fairly certain the two parties were still on separate weekends. They had it at the Olympia Community Center last year, close to downtown, and only had to move it this year because that venue was not available this year on the date they needed. Laney's Community Center proved a much better venue anyway, and I think their aim is to return again next year. And I'll probably return to attend the event again too.

As for yesterday, holy hell do Gina and Beth keep a packed social schedule—even after that party, yesterday morning they hosted a brunch/football party to watch a game airing at 10 a.m.! Again it was potluck, and again I got to eat from a spread I contributed nothing to. Whatever, I guess that's my brand! Beth in particular seemed really appreciative that I came down at all, and neither of them ever gave any indication that they thought I was being a leech in any way, so I'm going to go with that.

They probably had six or so friends over, and they all began arriving at around 9:30, right around the time I finished getting ready for the day. I packed up all my stuff, and maybe an hour later, Gina was driving me downtown. Finally we had an opportunity for something I've been asking for ever since she got the job as Budget Coordinator (or something to that effect) at the Olympia Police Department: a tour of the OPD headquarters! And since those offices are in the City Hall building, I also got a brief tour of City Hall outside of regular hours open to the public. She even took a picture of me in the City Council Chambers, sitting in the Mayor's chair.

I was similarly reticent about taking photos at the police department, unsure of what the legality was. Once I mentioned it, though, Gina said it was totally fine to take photos of anything I wanted. She even said I could backtrack, but I didn't feel the need to. I did also get a picture of me sitting in a holding cell, though. They have just one there, and it was not being used. In fact, being a Saturday, we only saw a couple of cops on the ground floor where they have their own desks. Gina's office is on the second floor where management positions are. Gina told me it was getting her Masters Degree that allowed her to get this job. It was nice to see higher education being of use in the way it was intended, given how often you encounter ideas for alternatives these days, because of crushing student debt, which thankfully I have not dealt with since making my last, incredibly freeing payment in 2007.

Gina then drove me from there over to the Olympia Transit Center, where I had about half an hour to kill before taking the bus trek back home. I was sure glad to find a public restroom there, as I would have been dying having to pee before I reached home otherwise. The bathroom sure smelled like body odor, but it worked. There was not one, but two designated "tent cities" within eyesight on either side of the Transit Center, as Olympia is suffering such a homelessness problem right now it's kind of a crisis, by all accounts. I later looked it up and Seattle / King County itself as the country's third-highest homeless population, behind only New York and Los Angeles, which is stunning considering how much further down the list Seattle is of the largest cities in the country. It stands to reason that other cities in the Puget Sound region would suffer similar problems, and Washington State is in the top five among the states. It's a real problem in the Puget Sound region overall, but I can't find any statistics on per capita to contextualize different sized cities—Seattle is far bigger than Olympia, after all, but Olympia seems particularly bad. I didn't think I had heard about similar city-run tent cities in Seattle, but it appears I was wrong about that: we have nine! A key difference here, I think, is that none of these nine are downtown, and even in a city as small as Olympia, downtown doesn't seem like the most logical choice. Maybe it just has to do with where they can find available land or something.

I got on the bus and it was pretty much a pleasant ride the whole way. I waited to have dinner until Shobhit got home from work around 8:30; he was much more into observing Diwali than perhaps he ever has been before while in Seattle (as opposed to, say, going to visit his mom in Delhi for the holiday). He wanted an Indian dinner, one that was simple and made of little more than potatoes, garbanzo beans, tomatoes and rice; and we lit pretty much all the candles in the condo. He even told me a lot of the story behind Diwali as we set candles around, at least one needed in every room according to him.

Then we watched Real Time with Bill Maher, during which Shobhit nodded off, and when that was done we went to bed.

[posted 12:21 pm]